Mutable
by Lys ap Adin
Summary: Chrome has changed, and Mukuro is surprised. Mukuro, Chrome, post-TYL arc.


**Title:** Mutable**  
Characters:** Mukuro, Chrome**  
Summary:** Chrome has changed, and Mukuro is surprised.**  
Notes:** For Cliché Bingo, prompt: "Second person narration." 804 words.

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**Mutable**

In your present state, it is impossible for you not to notice when your cute little avatar up and disappears right in the middle of a discussion with Ken and Chikusa, because everything goes black and silent.

It is a bad five minutes, and when they are over you will put them from your mind, because you will not like to think of them. Suffice it to say that they number among some of the longest minutes you have known--and you have known many long, tense moments in your time.

Even eternities must end, however, when the little bird has worn away endless mountains. One moment all is silence; the next, there is light, and Chrome is back and calling for Ken and Chikusa.

You shoulder her aside before the words have even finished leaving her lips, and stand in the middle of a Kokuyo wasteland, gulping down breaths of relatively fresh air. You are standing in a fall of shadow; when you have control of yourself again, you move to stand in a patch of sunlight, just as Ken and Chikusa come skidding into the room. Both of them are panicky, afraid, and they are visibly relieved to see you standing there.

You've always been the master of yourself. You greet them with a laugh and a shrug, even as you rake through Chrome's memories, sieving out the most relevant pieces. "Our little Chrome has been on an adventure," you say. "It seems she's been to the future."

"No way," Ken says, immediately, with that quaint refusal to believe even when one does. He breaks into an enormous grin. "Have we managed to conquer the world by then, or what?"

"Perhaps I will let her tell you herself," you say. It is not without regret, but your presence here is always a drain on a frail girl-child's body, and--

The second great shock of your day comes when you release your grip on Chrome's body and Chrome herself steps in to supply her own illusory organs.

Someone has taught her to understand her own strength.

You ransack her memories again, until you find it--Hibari Kyouya himself, telling Chrome with icy, methodical calm to save herself and stand on her own two feet. You can't help but feel a moment's admiration for the deft way the man has outflanked you, even as you rage at his meddling.

_But Mukuro-sama, if he hadn't done that, I wouldn't be here right now,_ Chrome tells you, perfectly matter-of-fact about it, and that's how you realize that you're betraying much more of yourself than you should be. _You were angry in the future, too,_ she goes on, even as she carries on a conversation with Ken and Chikusa, trying to explain Byakuran and his convoluted games to them. _Sort of angry, anyway. You called him seven kinds of names when you realized what he'd done._

And she shows you--yourself, as you will be, as you may be, ten years hence. Seeing yourself from the outside is an old trick, one you mastered a while ago, but it still surprises you when Chrome uses it on you. You really hadn't thought she had so much control, or subtlety.

She's learned a lot in this future, it seems, and as you watching yourself complain about interfering Clouds who are no better than they should be, you can see the fear at the heart of yourself.

_Don't worry, Mukuro-sama,_ she says, and you get the distinct sense of a hand sliding into yours. _I'm not going anywhere. I still belong to you. Even if I don't have to--because I want to._

And that is the day's third, and you devoutly hope final, shock. She knows what you are, and she knows the things you want and work for. What's more, she has no need of you now, and she has a place with the Vongola in her own right. There is no reason for her to stay, now that she doesn't have to.

_You--_ is what you start to say, but you stop, and wonder how it is that this slip of a girl, barely out of childhood, can render you so stricken for words.

_You're more than you think you are,_ Chrome tells you, with perfect assurance, and you can hear echoes of Sawada in the words, even though they, technically, belong to that damn interfering Hibari of the future.

It occurs to you (and not for the first time, either) that coming to Japan and getting tangled up with the Vongola may have been a miscalculation.

_We shall see,_ you tell her, irritable.

Her answer is sunny, and no less full of implacable finality for it, the kind that comes based on a bedrock of complete confidence. _Yes,_ she says to you. _We shall._

**- end -**

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